The Reality of Human Trafficking

February 22 2022

Trigger warning: This article contains themes of sexual exploitation. If you find yourself in need of mental health support, contact the Crisis Outreach and Support Team (COAST) 1-866-550-5205 to speak with someone immediately and get referred to help.

Just one week after the national celebration of Valentine’s Day, Canada recognizes a new day of observation – Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Only in its second year, Human Trafficking Awareness Day shines a light on the modern-day slavery that happens across Canada and right here in Niagara, often in the form of sex trafficking.

February 22nd commemorates the day that the Canadian House of Commons passed a motion condemning the trafficking of women and children across international borders for the purposes of sexual exploitation. Its close proximity to Valentine’s Day creates a startling comparison that only reminds us how easy it can be to fall into a trafficker’s trap.

How it starts…

The realities of human trafficking aren’t what you see in the media. Very rarely is a young woman kidnapped from the street or the schoolyard and forced into the sex trade – the simple fact is that traffickers are too smart for that. Instead, it starts with a direct message on Instagram to a young woman, telling her she is beautiful and that he just had to reach out and get to know her. He asks her questions about her hopes and dreams and for the first time in her life, she feels seen. Important. Special.

The grooming stage

After chatting every day on Instagram, she feels like no one knows her better than this new friend. When he suggests taking their relationship offline, she is excited to meet up in person. He is kind and generous, taking her out to dinners and buying her gifts. After she mentioned money was tight for food this month, he buys her groceries and treats her to a nail appointment, telling her she is special and she deserved it.

He introduces her to his friends and tells her how happy it makes her that they all get along. He never introduces his girlfriend to his friends, he says. No one has ever been special enough until she came along. They move in together and life has never been more perfect.

Manipulation

She knows that she is starting to fall in love with this man; no one has ever treated her this nicely. But, suddenly, he has started to seem unhappy in their relationship. He does so much for her and she doesn’t appreciate him enough, he tells her. Some days are better than others, but she never knows which it’s going to be. She would do anything to make him happy again, to have him treat her as nicely as he did in the beginning. So, when he asks her to do something she isn’t really comfortable with in order to help their relationship, she does it anyway. Suddenly, he isn’t mad anymore and loves her again like in the beginning. But every time he pulls away emotionally, he asks her to do something else outside of her comfort zone. He pushes her boundaries and she agrees to his requests; she believes that he loves her and knows he is capable of treating her nicely, so why wouldn’t she do things to make him happy?

Exploitation

If she really loves him, he tells her, then she will make sacrifices and do things that she might not want to do in order to help him and their relationship. Before long she is having sex with people she doesn’t know, watching as money is given to him, but never to her. Now he has blackmail to hold over her, and convinces her that no one else could ever love her if they knew the things she had done.

She knows this isn’t right, but she doesn’t know what to do about it. She wants to leave the apartment they share, but where would she go? He holds all of the money she earns, so how would she survive? She had stopped speaking to her friends and family months ago because he had convinced her that they didn’t care about her, so how could she reach out to them for help now? She could try to run, but what would he do to her when he finds her?

She is alone now, dependent on her trafficker for food and housing. She’s trapped.

Love is not supposed to hurt

But for her, it does, and she is not the only one. Over one in three survivors of human trafficking identify their trafficker as their current or previous boyfriend/girlfriend. The relationship factor makes it very difficult for victims to identify when they’re being trafficked. But when love starts to hurt, it is time to ask for help.

While it’s most common for traffickers to be men using the promise of love and affection to lure victims, there are also cases of survivors being lured by male or female friends and even family members.

You can help survivors of human trafficking this February by donating to organizations like the YWCA Niagara Region, who work to educate the community about human trafficking and give survivors the support they need to heal from the trauma of human trafficking.